The unearthly screeches caught up with her and she could feel the hot breath of something big and fast against her feet and buttocks. Just as she finally reached the salvation of the portal back to the maze that led to the outer world, Nina was struck down hard. Darkness met her instantly and she did not even hear the voices of the men who were there to rescue her.
Chapter 9
“Is she dead? Is she dead?” Neville asked.
The obscure clinic in a desolate part of Bhutan was small, but adequate in medical provisions and staff. Archeologist Neville Padayachee leaned over the small frame of Nina Gould while nurses tried to keep him away from the bed until the doctor showed up. A British man entered the emergency room and pulled Neville backward to give Nina some room.
“You gentlemen cannot be here while we examine the patient,” one of the nurses informed them. “You are not authorized to be here.”
“You’re not going to operate on her, for Christ’s sake. She is not fatally injured. Any fool can see that. And I am Special Agent Patrick Smith of the British Secret Intelligence Service. I am damn well authorized,” Paddy ranted, keeping the equally jumpy Neville behind him.
“The doctor will be here soon, sir. Please, wait outside for him. It is our policy—”
“Come on, Neville. Let’s go wait outside until the doctor shows up. There is nothing we can do until she comes to anyway,” Paddy told the guide who had led him to the excavation site when Paddy arrived to collect Nina at the lodge. They soon found that she was absent and it was easy to see what she used and where she went. Her conversation with Neville gave away her plans anyway.
“I didn’t think for a second that she would leave it at that, Agent Smith,” he told Paddy as they sat down with some really bad tea in the waiting area. “But I never thought she would just go rogue and go on her own. I mean, the woman is a university lecturer, not to mention astute in all things, yet she embarked on a suicidal journey to one of the most dangerous places in the Himalayas! What was she thinking?”
Paddy shrugged. “I have known Nina for years and never seen her back down from a challenge no matter how perilous. My only explanation for her clearly irrational behavior is that her search for answers once again provoked this insanity.” He sipped his tea and gave it some thought. “Nina Gould is passionate, driven to find the truth under the guise of mundane matters. That is her madness. She resorts to irresponsible things all the time, but this is really an occasion where she pushed the envelope just a tad.”
“I wonder what happened to her down there. Have your men ascertained the nature of the item in her possession?” Neville asked. “It looked everything but antique. On the contrary…”
“They have no idea what it is, but we think it might be some compact energy producer utilizing technology we are unfamiliar with. It is really rather interesting,” Paddy said.
“What gets me is that there is no place in the cavern she could have obtained it,” Neville replied, astonished. “I have to speak to her when she wakes up. It is imperative that I know where she found it, because such technology has to be treated and kept in specific conditions — like that not of a common cave, you see?”
“I understand your confusion, Neville. My bother is that she literally had nowhere to go from where we found her, yet she appeared with this item. It is truly perplexing, I tell you. I have taken the liberty of calling the men who asked me to locate her in the first place. They should be here within the next day,” Paddy sighed. “I would love to know what they would make of this.”
“The patient is awake and cognizant, Agent Smith,” the nurse announced. “Dr. Basu is attending to her.”
“Thank you,” Paddy replied as the two men who discovered Nina followed the nurse to Nina’s room where they met Dr. Basu. She was a tall, attractive Indian woman in her forties with an unusually long braid that was folded and fastened on the back of her head. They exchanged introductions, but Nina remained uncharacteristically quiet.
“How are you feeling, Miss Nina?” Neville asked, keeping his voice low.
“Hello, Nina,” Paddy nodded.
Her eyes fluttered and she pried apart her parched lips slowly to form her first waking words, “What an odd combination you two are.”
The two men found her response amusing, but it made them uncomfortable for its oddity. Neville and Paddy exchanged a raised eyebrow or two.
“Who did you expect then?” Paddy asked.
“I don’t know, Patrick,” she sighed wearily, “it’s just weird to see a Scottish James Bond and an Indian Indiana Jones looming over me just as I came out of an encounter with five yeti and a room from Star Trek.”
“What?” Neville asked her, chuckling at the hilarious imagery she had just conjured in his head. Paddy was no less humored by it, and stood laughing under his hand.
“It’s true. I was sent to retrieve some sort of… generator by five German men disguised as yeti… wait… they were not men, but they were humanoid,” she frowned as she attempted to formulate a logical, and believable, account of her ordeal.
“You can tell us all about it after you have taken some rest, Dr. Gould,” Dr. Basu said gently. Her voice was mesmerizing — a low, husky song of words that instantly lulled those who heard it. All three of them stared at the lovely doctor for a moment, taking in her words.
“But I have to get as much information from her as possible, while she is still fresh out of the experience, doctor,” Paddy explained.
“I know, Agent Smith, and you will be allowed to do so. But first Dr. Gould needs to sleep,” she chimed.
“Sleep?” Neville gasped, astounded. “She just slept for a day and a half! How much more sleep could she need?”
“There is a difference between being unconscious and being asleep, Mr. Padayachee. Now that we have her back out of her oblivion, her mind needs sleep,” she said, shaking her head ever so slightly in annoyance. “I believe she is expecting more visitors, Agent Smith?”
“Aye, two more, due tomorrow.”
She rolled her eyes in the subtlest and most professional way possible, “Are they as astute as your friend here?”
Paddy had to snigger at such a fine low blow directed toward Neville.
The next morning Nina woke to hear the hushed conversation of familiar voices, but she did not have the strength to open her eyes. Over her nose and mouth she felt a strange sensation, something rubbery that had a sweet smell, drowning her in its thick composition. But she soon came out of the fog of her disorientation and realized that it was an oxygen mask, which she wasted no time in pulling off, as if by reflex.
“No, no,” a female voice urged, “don’t do that, Dr. Gould!” and she felt the mask being put back on.
“Is she awake?” more than one person asked, but they grew silent again. She reckoned the woman silenced them, thinking that she was still asleep. Nina pried her eyes open against their resistance and through the warped haze of her sight she could see four figures seated in a semi-circle. Nina gasped loudly and they turned their heads to look at her.
“No, no, no,” she whispered in sheer terror.
“Nina?” Purdue smiled, but she looked him straight in the eye, shaking her head in fright. “Nina, it’s me, Dave.”
Dr. Basu intervened, holding her open hand out to the men to stay away as she approached Nina’s bedside.